Prague Talk

After holding a number of senior roles in Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs, Alan Gibbons became the country’s ambassador to Czechia in 2023. With the Dublin government taking over the rotating presidency of the European Union on July 1, I sat down with Mr. Gibbons to ask what that means for Ireland, and for his own role. We also discussed the scenes in March when thousands of Irish football...

Earlier this year, Jan Zikmund launched Zikmund Literary , an agency that primarily aims to help Czech authors find readers around the world. But how does he plan to achieve this? How do books from this country tend to fare in foreign markets? And what other states can Czechia learn from in this arena? I discussed these questions and more with Zikmund, who is in his mid 30s and previously helped p...

Since its seat-of-the-pants beginnings in the early 2000s, the Prague Fringe has established itself as one of the leading events of its kind in Europe. Indeed, this year the festival is marking no less than a quarter century of existence with a packed programme that gets underway on May 22. The Prague Fringe was first dreamt up by two friends: Steve Gove, who still runs it, and Angus Coull, who is...

London-born Benjamin Souček renovates stately homes in Czechia, the country of his forefathers. Indeed, Souček – who is also active in Prague cricket circles – has even received an award at the Czech Senate for his contribution to the country’s cultural heritage.

Pavlína Louženská is a trend forecaster, helping banks, startups and other organisations understand likely developments in the coming years – and plan accordingly. When we spoke, the conversation took in the methods Louženská employs to predict the future, why Czechs may be less bothered about keeping up to date than other nations, whether it’s embarrassing to be a “laggard” – and much more.  

Jana Ciglerová is just about to become Czech Radio’s correspondent in Washington. Unusually the journalist is moving there not from Prague but Florida, where she has lived for the best part of a decade and worked for a Czech media outlet. Ahead of this big switch, I asked Ciglerová about everything from keeping up with the non-stop pronouncements of President Trump to how living in the U.S. has sh...

This week saw the first screening in Prague of the independent movie Wooden Hearts, which stars Vít Hořejš, founder of the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre. The fiction film also features many of the traditional puppets that Hořejš – who left Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s – uncovered in an old Czech church in Manhattan several decades ago. He and his life partner Bonnie Stein, who produ...

Devade (Nineties) is the title of a fascinating new book and exhibition looking at architecture in Prague in the first decade after the Velvet Revolution. Among the best known buildings referred to are hotels such as the Hilton and the Don Giovanni, as well as the Myslbek Palace and the now iconic Dancing House. I discussed the challenges faced by Prague’s architects in the 1990s – as well as the...

Jitka Exler has enjoyed great success in the US, designing and making puppet characters for TV hits The Muppet Show and Sesame Street and working for major toy manufacturers. Exler had been forced to leave her native Czechoslovakia after signing the Charter 77 human rights document at the age of 19. The artist currently has a joint exhibition at the Czech Center New York.

As a presenter on Canal+ Sport Karel Häring is one of the faces of the English Premier League for many Czech football fans. How has he managed the switch after decades as a print journalist? And what is it like working, and travelling, with star player turned pundit Karel Poborský? I discussed these questions and more with Karel Häring at our Prague studios.  

TV journalist Darja Stomatová has been reporting from Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Last week Stomatová received the Ferdinand Peroutka Prize, perhaps the most prestigious honour in Czech journalism, for her coverage of the conflict. I spoke to the 34-year-old at our studios in Prague.

Czech interest in this year’s Academy Awards will centre on Mr. Nobody Against Putin, a Danish-Czech production nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category. The film contains footage shot surreptitiously by a teacher, Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, who wanted to expose war propaganda in schools in Russia. Talankin had no choice but to flee his native country before the documentary’s release and is...

Bet Orten studied fashion photography in London after a stint as an assistant to a well-known celebrity photographer in New York. But for the last decade and a half Orten, whose Instagram profile describes her as a “female photographer taking pictures of other females”, has been living here in her native Prague. We spoke at our studios ahead of an exhibition she has coming up in the Czech capital...

The Trump administration’s refusal to rule out taking the Danish territory of Greenland by force has caused shockwaves in Europe, with the threat to a fellow NATO member raising grave questions about the alliance’s future. If NATO does cease to exist in its current form, what will that mean in practical terms for European countries such as Czechia? I discussed that and related questions with Micha...

Cynthia Paces is the author of Prague: The Heart of Europe, which traces the city’s fascinating history from the 10th century to the modern era. The US historian also has strong personal ties to the city, from which the Pačes family were forced to flee after the 1948 Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia.

Musician Markéta Irglová has had a busy 2025, releasing a new album and touring with Glen Hansard under the name The Swell Season, a joint project that had been dormant for some years. The Czech-Irish pairing famously won an Oscar in 2007 for their song Falling Slowly. First recorded in a studio near Prague, it reached international audiences in Once, as well as a successful musical based on the h...

Colin Stuart has been a fixture on the Prague music scene since the early 1990s, when he produced the Ecstasy of St. Theresa and several other local bands. He also worked with musicians from those groups on Colorfactory, a project that reached large audiences when the music was used in the era-defining film Šeptej (Whisper). I spoke to Stuart at his studio just around the corner from Prague’s Danc...

US-born Katherine Kastner is co-owner of Hunt Kastner, an independent Prague gallery that has helped develop the international careers of many Czech artists. Kastner herself has deep Czech roots: Her grandmother was related to Karel and Josef Čapek and in the 1980s she regularly visited Prague, where she was introduced to the local art scene through relatives, and notable artists, Pavel Brázda and...

A relatively little known but highly distinctive Brno district is the subject of Kamenka Republic, a new book edited by writer and publisher Martin Reiner. Speaking from the Moravian capital, he explains what makes Kamenka special – and why it has survived for a century when other interwar workers’ housing “colonies” in Brno have long disappeared. Reiner also discusses why he is calling time on Dr...

Max Diesing runs Maximum Underground, an alternative music shop located in Prague’s Old Town for many years. In fact the American says he is just about to mark his business’s “33 and a third” birthday as a fixture on the city’s alternative music scene. But what was it like setting up an independent store here just a couple of years after the Velvet Revolution? And what motivates him to keep runnin...

Lukáš Dolanský is a well-known journalist who until this year served as Czech Television’s correspondent in the United Kingdom. Dolanský underwent something of a baptism of fire in the posting, arriving just days before the news broke of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. That’s among many stories Dolanský recounts, and insights he shares, in a new book, The Colours of My London.  

Tomáš Koblížek is an expert on disinformation, a phenomenon that has grabbed many headlines in recent years. In a wide-ranging conversation, the philosopher says disinfo isn’t focused only on deceiving people but is also about “boring” them into losing interest in certain issues entirely. But, he argues, it is possible to combat it. I spoke to Koblížek in connection with the recent publication of...

One of Czechia’s most distinctive jewellery designers, Zdeněk Vacek currently has a sensational retrospective of his quarter-century career at Prague’s Museum of Decorative Arts. Vacek, a goldsmith by trade, was previously known for his work under the name Zorya with then life partner Daniel Pošta but now operates solo, mainly producing tailor-made pieces for often affluent clients. I spoke to him...

Zuzana Stivínová is a well-known Czech actress. She played one of the main roles in the stage version of Václav Havel’s Leaving in 2007 and today is most commonly to be found on the boards of the National Theatre in Prague. She has also worked with such screen directors as Věra Chytilová and Miloš Forman, and starred in the acclaimed TV drama Wasteland. Stivínová, who comes from an artistic backgr...

A new translation of one of the most important books in Czech literature, The Grandmother (Babička) by Božena Němcová, will be launched by the UK-based Jantar Publishing at the end of this month. It’s the work of Englishwoman Susan Reynolds, who previously produced an acclaimed translation of another Czech classic, Karel Jaromír Erben’s Kytice. I spoke to Reynolds about how she approached renderin...